Heretofore, improved performance of rotary piston, internal combustion engines across the full range of operation conditions from idling speed to full throttle, has been sought by providing a prechamber or precombustion chamber in which fuel is ignited and flashed into the working chamber to ignite the main fuel charge therein. Such an engine is disclosed in the aforesaid U.S. Pat. to Clawson and the U.S. Pat. No. 3,053,238 to Meurer. Also, rotary piston internal combustion engines of the Wankel type operating on the diesel principle have been conceived as exemplified in the U.S. Pat. Nos. to Feller, 3,782,337, Peras, 3,216,404 and Hamada 3,270,719 and British Pat. No. 1,068,209 also to Feller. In these latter type engines relatively large quantities of air are required and therefore the overall size of the engine becomes relatively large. Also it has been found difficult in Wankel type rotary piston internal combustion engines operating as a diesel to develop sufficient compression to ignite injected fuel. The present invention combines both concepts so as to achieve the advantages of precombustion and diesel operation without the attendant difficulty in achieving fuel ignition.
It is, therefore, an object of this invention to provide a fuel combustion system for a rotary piston, internal combustion engine operating on the heat of compression principle which requires compression of only a relatively small quantity of air to achieve fuel ignition.
It is another object of the present invention to provide in a rotary piston, internal combustion engine of the Wankel type an apparatus and method for more efficient combustion of fuel to minimize harmful constituents in exhaust emissions.